From: thepipeline_xyz
Chris and Mitch are the co-founders of Switchboard [01:16:00]. They teamed up in May 2021 to build the oracle solution [03:53:00].
Chris’s Background
Chris has been involved in crypto for an extended period [02:01:00]. He was an early employee at Circle, starting in 2013-2014 [02:02:00]. At Circle, he held various roles, notably being the second person on their trading desk, working alongside CMS Holdings [02:11:00]. He observed the trading desk evolve from a small operation into a massive 24/7 global desk, which shaped his perspective on crypto and the possibilities achievable through hard work [02:23:00].
Chris departed Circle in 2019 when their team was acquired by Kraken [02:33:00]. He then ventured out independently, focusing on investing and building [02:40:00]. He became involved with the Solana ecosystem early on, recognizing the demand for high-performance Layer 1 blockchains and cost-effective chains to facilitate new use cases [02:46:00]. From his trading background, he was optimistic that everything would eventually be tradable on decentralized exchanges (DEXes) [03:11:00], an idea that was considered controversial even in 2018-2019, prior to the DeFi summer [03:22:00]. Initially, they aimed to develop a product for long-tail derivatives but soon realized the necessity of an oracle to support such ventures [03:34:00].
Mitch’s Background
Mitch was introduced to Chris through a mutual college friend in San Francisco [03:59:00]. Before joining Chris to build Switchboard, Mitch was leading a team focused on VPC networking within Google Cloud for several years [04:16:00]. Prior to that role, he worked in security for Google Hardware [04:21:00]. Mitch realized that the corporate environment was not for him [04:26:00] and desired to create something of his own [04:31:00].
Chris informed Mitch about the significant need for oracles on various blockchains and suggested prototyping a solution [04:35:00]. Mitch developed a demo in approximately two weeks, and Chris managed to close their seed round within another two weeks, prompting Mitch to leave Google [04:41:00]. Mitch is grateful for the growth of Switchboard, which now covers a total volume of $2 billion and processes over 2 million transactions daily [04:53:00]. On Solana, Switchboard accounts for 3% to 7% of traffic, depending on the day [05:04:00].